Re: Invalid channel numbers

[pgut001%cs.auckland.ac.nz@localhost (Peter Gutmann)]

der Mouse <mouse%Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA@localhost> writes:

>> When you get a channel-specific request (channel open, channel
>> request, etc), you're supposed to send back a succeeded or failed
>> status.  How do you send back a response for the condition that you
>> couldn't parse the request to the point of finding the channel number
>> to use in the response?
>
>There is no such condition, because if you can't parse the request, you have
>no request to respond to, so you don't have to worry about framing any
>particular kind of response to it.

Does the spec say this anywhere?  I can see an implementation hanging while
waiting for a response to a request that'll never arrive if you don't send it
back at least some sort of response.  Not replying seems somewhat broken to
me, if the spec says (as it seems to) that you need to send back a "succeeded"
or "failed" response then not sending back anything under some conditions
seems wrong - you've detected an error, you should send back some indication
of this.

>You can of course send a "you sent me something I couldn't make head nor tail
>of" error, but that's very different from an error response to a channel-
>specific request.

The only error message mechanism that I can see if you can't send a request-
failed response is a full disconnect, which is rather drastic if there are
(for example) valid data transfers in progress on other channels at the time.

Peter.